Why Friday the 13th Is Unlucky
http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a/friday_the_13th.htm

I HAVE before me the abstract of a 1993 study published in the British Medical Journal provocatively titled "Is Friday the 13th Bad for Your Health?"

With the aim of mapping "the relation between health, behaviour, and superstition surrounding Friday 13th in the United Kingdom," its authors compared the ratio of traffic volume to the number of automobile accidents on two different days, Friday the 6th and Friday the 13th, over a period of years.

Amazingly, they found that in the region sampled, while consistently fewer people chose to drive their cars on Friday the 13th, the number of hospital admissions due to vehicular accidents was significantly higher than on "normal" Fridays. Their conclusion:

"Friday 13th is unlucky for some. The risk of hospital admission as a result of a transport accident may be increased by as much as 52 percent. Staying at home is recommended."

Paraskevidekatriaphobics — people afflicted with a morbid, irrational fear of Friday the 13th — will be pricking up their ears about now, buoyed by seeming evidence that the source of their unholy terror might not be so irrational after all. It's unwise to take solace in a single scientific study, however, especially one so peculiar. I suspect these statistics have more to teach us about human psychology than the ill-fatedness of any particular date on the calendar.

Friday the 13th, 'the most widespread superstition'

The sixth day of the week and the number 13 both have foreboding reputations said to date from ancient times. It seems their inevitable conjunction from one to three times a year (there will be two such occurrences in 2013, exactly 13 weeks apart) portends more misfortune than some credulous minds can bear. According to some sources it's the most widespread superstition in the United States today. Some people refuse to go to work on Friday the 13th; some won't eat in restaurants; many wouldn't think of setting a wedding on the date.

How many Americans at the beginning of the 21st century suffer from this condition? According to Dr. Donald Dossey, a psychotherapist specializing in the treatment of phobias (and coiner of the term paraskevidekatriaphobia, also spelled paraskavedekatriaphobia), the figure may be as high as 21 million. If he's right, no fewer than eight percent of Americans remain in the grips of a very old superstition.

Exactly how old is difficult to say, because determining the origins of superstitions is an inexact science, at best. In fact, it's mostly guesswork.
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LEGEND HAS IT: If 13 people sit down to dinner together, one will die within the year. The Turks so disliked the number 13 that it was practically expunged from their vocabulary (Brewer, 1894). Many cities do not have a 13th Street or a 13th Avenue. Many buildings don't have a 13th floor. If you have 13 letters in your name, you will have the devil's luck (Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Theodore Bundy and Albert De Salvo all have 13 letters in their names). There are 13 witches in a coven.

The Devil's Dozen

Although no one can say for sure when and why human beings first associated the number 13 with misfortune, the superstition is assumed to be quite old, and there exist any number of theories — many of which deserve to be treated with a healthy skepticism, please note — purporting to trace its origins to antiquity and beyond.

It has been proposed, for example, that fears surrounding the number 13 are as ancient as the act of counting. Primitive man had only his 10 fingers and two feet to represent units, this explanation goes, so he could count no higher than 12. What lay beyond that — 13 — was an impenetrable mystery to our prehistoric forebears, hence an object of superstition.

Which has an edifying ring to it, but one is left wondering: did primitive man not have toes?

Life and death

Despite whatever terrors the numerical unknown held for their hunter-gatherer ancestors, ancient civilizations weren't unanimous in their dread of 13. The Chinese regarded the number as lucky, some commentators note, as did the Egyptians in the time of the pharaohs.

To the ancient Egyptians, we're told, life was a quest for spiritual ascension which unfolded in stages — twelve in this life and a thirteenth beyond, thought to be the eternal afterlife. The number 13 therefore symbolized death, not in terms of dust and decay but as a glorious and desirable transformation. Though Egyptian civilization perished, the symbolism conferred on the number 13 by its priesthood survived, we may speculate, only to be corrupted by subsequent cultures who came to associate 13 with a fear of death instead of a reverence for the afterlife.

Anathema

Still other sources speculate that the number 13 may have been purposely vilified by the founders of patriarchal religions in the early days of western civilization because it represented femininity. Thirteen had been revered in prehistoric goddess-worshiping cultures, we are told, because it corresponded to the number of lunar (menstrual) cycles in a year (13 x 28 = 364 days). The "Earth Mother of Laussel," for example — a 27,000-year-old carving found near the Lascaux caves in France often cited as an icon of matriarchal spirituality — depicts a female figure holding a crescent-shaped horn bearing 13 notches. As the solar calendar triumphed over the lunar with the rise of male-dominated civilization, it is surmised, so did the "perfect" number 12 over the "imperfect" number 13, thereafter considered anathema.

On the other hand, one of the earliest concrete taboos associated with the number 13 — a taboo still observed by some superstitious folks today, apparently — is said to have originated in the East with the Hindus, who believed, for reasons I haven't been able to ascertain, that it is always unlucky for 13 people to gather in one place — say, at dinner. Interestingly enough, precisely the same superstition has been attributed to the ancient Vikings (though I have also been told, for what it's worth, that this and the accompanying mythographical explanation of it are apocryphal). That story has been laid down as follows:

And Loki makes thirteen

Twelve gods were invited to a banquet at Valhalla. Loki, the Evil One, god of mischief, had been left off the guest list but crashed the party, bringing the total number of attendees to 13. True to character, Loki raised hell by inciting Hod, the blind god of winter, to attack Balder the Good, who was a favorite of the gods. Hod took a spear of mistletoe offered by Loki and obediently hurled it at Balder, killing him instantly. All Valhalla grieved. And although one might take the moral of this story to be "Beware of uninvited guests bearing mistletoe," the Norse themselves apparently concluded that 13 people at a dinner party is just plain bad luck.

As if to prove the point, the Bible tells us there were exactly 13 present at the Last Supper. One of the dinner guests — er, disciples — betrayed Jesus Christ, setting the stage for the Crucifixion.

Did I mention the Crucifixion took place on a Friday?
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LEGEND HAS IT: Never change your bed on Friday; it will bring bad dreams. If you cut your nails on Friday, you cut them for sorrow. Don't start a trip on Friday or you will encounter misfortune. Ships that set sail on a Friday will have bad luck, as in the tale of H.M.S. Friday. One hundred years ago, the British government sought to quell the longstanding superstition among seamen that setting sail on Fridays was unlucky. A special ship was commissioned and given the name "H.M.S. Friday." They laid her keel on a Friday, launched her on a Friday, selected her crew on a Friday, and hired a man named Jim Friday to be her captain. To top it off, H.M.S. Friday embarked on her maiden voyage on a Friday — and was never seen or heard from again.

Bad Friday

Some say Friday's bad reputation goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. It was on a Friday, supposedly, that Eve tempted Adam with the forbidden fruit. Adam bit, as we all learned in Sunday School, and they were both ejected from Paradise. Tradition also holds that the Great Flood began on a Friday; God tongue-tied the builders of the Tower of Babel on a Friday; the Temple of Solomon was destroyed on a Friday; and, of course, Friday was the day of the week on which Christ was crucified. It is therefore a day of penance for Christians.

In pagan Rome, Friday was execution day (later Hangman's Day in Britain), but in other pre-Christian cultures it was the sabbath, a day of worship, so those who indulged in secular or self-interested activities on that day could not expect to receive blessings from the gods — which may explain the lingering taboo on embarking on journeys or starting important projects on Fridays.

To complicate matters, these pagan associations were not lost on the early Church, which went to great lengths to suppress them. If Friday was a holy day for heathens, the Church fathers felt, it must not be so for Christians — thus it became known in the Middle Ages as the "Witches' Sabbath," and thereby hangs another tale.

The witch-goddess

The name "Friday" was derived from a Norse deity worshipped on the sixth day, known either as Frigg (goddess of marriage and fertility), or Freya (goddess of sex and fertility), or both, the two figures having become intertwined in the handing down of myths over time (the etymology of "Friday" has been given both ways). Frigg/Freya corresponded to Venus, the goddess of love of the Romans, who named the sixth day of the week in her honor "dies Veneris."

Friday was actually considered quite lucky by pre-Christian Teutonic peoples, we are told — especially as a day to get married — because of its traditional association with love and fertility. All that changed when Christianity came along. The goddess of the sixth day — most likely Freya in this context, given that the cat was her sacred animal — was recast in post-pagan folklore as a witch, and her day became associated with evil doings.

Various legends developed in that vein, but one is of particular interest: As the story goes, the witches of the north used to observe their sabbath by gathering in a cemetery in the dark of the moon. On one such occasion the Friday goddess, Freya herself, came down from her sanctuary in the mountaintops and appeared before the group, who numbered only 12 at the time, and gave them one of her cats, after which the witches' coven — and, by "tradition," every properly-formed coven since — comprised exactly 13.
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The unanswered question

The astute reader will have observed that while we have thus far insinuated any number of intriguing connections between events, practices and beliefs attributed to ancient cultures and the superstitious fear of Fridays and the number 13, we have yet to happen upon an explanation of how, why, or when these separate strands of folklore converged — if that is indeed what happened — to mark Friday the 13th as the unluckiest day of all.

There's a very simple reason for that: nobody really knows, and few concrete explanations have been proposed.

'A day so infamous'

One theory, recently offered up as historical fact in the novel The Da Vinci Code, holds that the stigma came about not as the result of a convergence, but because of a catastrophe, a single historical event that happened nearly 700 years ago. That event was the decimation of the Knights Templar, the legendary order of "warrior monks" formed during the Christian Crusades to combat Islam. Renowned as a fighting force for 200 years, by the 1300s the order had grown so pervasive and powerful it was perceived as a political threat by kings and popes alike and brought down by a church-state conspiracy, as recounted by Katharine Kurtz in Tales of the Knights Templar (Warner Books, 1995):

On October 13, 1307, a day so infamous that Friday the 13th would become a synonym for ill fortune, officers of King Philip IV of France carried out mass arrests in a well-coordinated dawn raid that left several thousand Templars — knights, sergeants, priests, and serving brethren — in chains, charged with heresy, blasphemy, various obscenities, and homosexual practices. None of these charges was ever proven, even in France — and the Order was found innocent elsewhere — but in the seven years following the arrests, hundreds of Templars suffered excruciating tortures intended to force "confessions," and more than a hundred died under torture or were executed by burning at the stake.
There are problems with the "day so infamous" thesis, not the least of which is that it attributes enormous significance to a relatively obscure historical event. Even more problematic for this or any other theory positing pre-modern origins for a superstitious dread of Friday the 13th is the fact that so little documentation has been found to prove that such a superstition even existed prior to the late 19th century.

An accrual of bad omens?

Going back more than a hundred years, Friday the 13th doesn't even merit a mention in the 1898 edition of E. Cobham Brewer's voluminous Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, though one does find entries for "Friday, an Unlucky Day" and "Thirteen Unlucky." When the date of ill fate finally does make an appearance in later editions of the text, it is without extravagant claims as to the superstition's historicity or longevity. The very brevity of the entry is instructive: "Friday the Thirteenth: A particularly unlucky Friday. See Thirteen" — implying that the extra dollop of misfortune might be accounted for in terms of a simple accrual, as it were, of bad omens:

UNLUCKY FRIDAY + UNLUCKY 13 = UNLUCKIER FRIDAY
That being the case, we are guilty of perpetuating a misnomer by labeling Friday the 13th "the unluckiest day of all," a designation perhaps better reserved for, say, a Friday the 13th on which one breaks a mirror, walks under a ladder, spills the salt, and spies a black cat crossing one's path — a day, if there ever was one, best spent in the safety of one's own home with doors locked, shutters closed, and fingers crossed.

Postscript: A novel theory

In 13: The Story of the World's Most Popular Superstition (Avalon, 2004), author Nathaniel Lachenmeyer argues that the commingling of "unlucky Friday" and "unlucky 13" took place in the pages of a specific literary work, a novel published in 1907 titled — what else? — Friday, the Thirteenth. The book, all but forgotten now, concerned dirty dealings in the stock market and sold quite well in its day. Both the titular phrase and the phobic premise behind it — namely that superstitious people regard Friday the 13th as a supremely unlucky day — were instantly adopted and popularized by the press.

It seems unlikely that the novelist, Thomas W. Lawson, literally invented that premise himself — he treats it within the story, in fact, as a notion that already existed in the public consciousness — but he most certainly lent it gravitas and set it on a path to becoming the most widespread — or at least the most widely known — superstition in the modern world.
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Friday the 13th: Count the letters in superstitious
http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/neighborhoods-east/friday-the-13th-count-the-letters-in-superstitious-644336/#ixzz2elH4PNwB

When Kathy Cmar turns 50 on Friday -- Friday the 13th -- she will count her many blessings -- the best of which, she said, is her daughter, Jennifer, who celebrated her 29th birthday May 13.

Besides their mother-daughter bond, the women share a birth date of note: Both were born on a Friday the 13th.

"When I was growing up, kids teased me that I was unlucky," Mrs. Cmar, of Liberty, recalled. "But I found the day lucky, especially after my daughter was born on the 13th. Now 13 is my lucky number."

Such sentiments defy the legends surrounding, and the definitions of, two very long words associated with the noted day: tridecaphobia and paraskevidekatriaphobia.

Tridecaphobia is a fear of the number 13; paraskevidekatriaphobia is a fear of Friday the 13th.

And people who suffer from either -- whether they know it or not -- often won't step on a crack in the sidewalk and usually avoid having black cats cross their paths, two actions that some believe bring bad luck.

P.V. Nickell, chairman of the department of psychiatry in the West Penn Allegheny Health System, said people always have had irrational fears or phobias.

Dr. Nickell said that while the genesis of the Friday the 13th phobia is unknown, most believe it can be traced to Friday being regarded as a bad day in Western cultures and Christian theology -- Jesus Christ was crucified on a Friday. The number 13 in numerology is considered an unlucky number, he said. And, many note that 13 people were present at the Last Supper.

"Combine the two and you get a double whammy," he warned.

Dr. Nickell, however, has never treated anyone for fear of the number 13.

"We technically only diagnose someone with a phobia if it impacts their ability to function," he noted. "So from that perspective, we would not have people come in for treatment as there are not many Friday the 13ths."

Friday is the third and final Friday the 13th for this year. The others this year were in January and April. There can be only three Friday the 13ths in any year.

We wondered -- on the eve of the day -- if fear of Friday the 13th packs the punch it once did.

Mrs. Cmar, who said she has never steered clear of sidewalk cracks or ladders, hopes to turn the superstition on its ear.

"I always play the number 13 in the lottery," she said.

She has yet to hit it big. (Score one for superstition.) But she said she blames probability more than bad luck. (Score one for mathematics.)

A very good day
Frank "Fritz" Chickis, 65, of Cecil, tells a poignant, personal story to debunk superstitions about bad things happening on Friday the 13th.

"I tell people 'I love it,' " he said.

He recalled that it was on Friday, March 13, 1970, that he left Vietnam after a year of military deployment.

Coming back to the United States, he crossed the International Date Line, which resulted in his arriving on the same day he left southeast Asia: Friday, March 13, 1970.

"I had two wonderful back-to-back Friday the 13ths," he said.

Making his homecoming even more special: That was the day he got to hold his son, Jeff, for the first time.

The father-son reunion changed the entire family's perception of the day.

Mr. Chickis' wife, Judy Chickis, 65, said any superstitions she grew up with about Friday 13th, black cats and the like vanished that day.

"Friday the 13th is a great day for us," she said.

Mr. Chickis' father, the late Frank Chickis Sr., agreed.

"My dad always said Friday the 13th was his -- and my -- lucky day," he said.

Make decisions rationally
Joseph Cvitkovic, director of behavioral health care at Jefferson Regional Medical Center, said superstitions develop as humans look for explanations about life -- and for ways to control it.

People who are more fearful or anxiety-prone tend to take irrational beliefs more seriously, he said.

He said because Friday the 13th doesn't occur that often, it doesn't pose an extensive problem.

"Bridge and tunnel phobias are more of a problem in Pittsburgh," Mr. Cvitkovic said.

Although he has never diagnosed symptoms of paraskevidekatriaphobia, he said treatment for it would be similar to treatment for any illogical fear.

"I would work with the person to come up with rational decisions that influence and urge a healthy, balanced lifestyle," Mr. Cvitkovic said.

"That is the best way to influence a good, positive outcome for a good day, whether it is Friday the 13th or Monday the 13th."

Barb Powischill of Whitehall says Friday's date is a "state of mind" -- and a memory.

On Friday, June 13, 1980, she and her young family went camping in celebration of her daughter, Karen's, fifth birthday. Karen was born on Friday the 13th.

In the course of unpacking, Karen's brother accidentally slammed the door on her fingers. The children couldn't open the door and by the time her parents heard her cries and freed her, some time had elapsed.

"There was no damage, not even bruising -- even though she could have gotten frost bite from the ice packs we kept on her hand," Mrs. Powischill said with a laugh. "It could have been a disaster but it turned out to be her lucky day."

South Park resident Garry Matson, 64, said that bad luck intrinsic to Friday the 13th is hokum, but he concedes that shaking off superstitions planted in childhood can be tough.

As a boy, he frequently helped his father, Ralph Matson, a carpenter, with roof work. "He would yell at me, 'don't go under the ladder,' " Mr. Matson said.

"Black cats or any other superstitions don't bother me, but to this day, I won't walk under a ladder," he admitted.

Kelly Horvath, 29, of Highland Park, traces her knowledge of the day's lore to childhood tales of black cats and broken mirrors as well as a "good luck" charm her grandmother brought her from New Zealand when she was 5. The charm is a tiki figure from the Maori people there.

"I don't really believe in Friday the 13th stories of woe, but I like to keep the tradition and carry the little tiki around that day," she said.

She and friends sometimes watch some of those iconic "Friday the 13th" horror/slasher franchise movies that day, she said.

Still, she maintains some reservations about the date.

"I would never go white-water rafting that day," she said.

Stacy Innerst

Friday the 13th: A Ghost Story
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/04/04/friday-the-13th-a-ghost-story/

I don’t believe in ghosts because, if there were such a thing, then I think the following would be a true story. As far as I know, it is not. …

It’s not widely discussed. Those who have witnessed it firsthand are, for obvious reasons, reluctant to talk about it. You’ll never see them publicly recounting their tales in front of the cameras and the microphones. These aren’t stories they are eager to tell.

But one hears whispers, rumors, stories told by the friends of friends. And those whispers, rumors and stories are too numerous and too eerily similar to be dismissed.

Something is happening. Something, it seems, happens every Friday the 13th, just before midnight.

The stories begin right around the turn of the 20th century, with the earliest reference I can find coming from August of 1897.

Capt. B.F. Auld of the Baltimore Police Department received a strange and surprising invitation to dinner at the home of Supreme Court Justice Henry Billings Brown. The two men had never met, and Capt. Auld never fully understood the reason for the invitation, but after what he described as their “distressing” conversation, he guessed it was because he had, two years earlier, been present at the funeral of Frederick Douglass.

“You saw him, then?” the justice asked him, with what Auld described as a “fearful” look. “And you are certain, without doubt, that he is, indeed, dead? You are certain?”

Auld never learned what prompted this feverish interrogation, and after firmly assuring Brown of all that he had seen at the great man’s funeral, the justice abruptly dropped the subject and the captain finished his meal in silence.

From later stories we can, I think, guess with some confidence what really lay behind that curious interview.

Consider, for example, the odd tale Charlie Chaplin told photographer Richard Avedon. The great genius (Chaplin), recalled a party at which a drunken D.W. Griffith had held him spellbound with his account of a terrifying “nightmare” he’d had in January of 1917. “‘I hear the mournful wail of millions,’ he told me,” Griffith had said, becoming manic and shaking visibly. “And he made me hear them too!” The next day, Chaplin said, the famed director told him it was just a clumsy, drunken jest, and begged him never to mention it again.

The details of Chaplin’s anecdote echo in another story told by the late Rep. Philip Campbell. As chairman of the House Committee on Rules, Campbell conducted hearings in October of 1921 on the violence of the revived Ku Klux Klan. The terror group’s leader, “Col.” Joe Simmons, was called before Congress. You can read accounts of his testimony, but most of those accounts neglect to mention that he also met with Campbell privately following those hearings and told the congressman of a disturbing “vision” he’d had two months before. Simmons’ vision was remarkably similar to Griffith’s nightmare — including even that exact phrase, “the mournful wail of millions.”

But Simmons was certain it had been more than a bad dream. “He was there,” he told Campbell, “Physically there beside my bed.”

I’ve unearthed dozens of similar stories, and hints of stories, and rumors of hints of stories. Seeking them out began as a hobby of sorts and later grew into an obsession.

My entrance into this strange world began with a friend from seminary whose identity I will protect here out of respect for his privacy. His father had been a prominent white southern preacher and a popular religious author, but he’s remembered today mainly for having been a fierce defender of segregation in the 1960s. I made some awkward joke about the similarity of my friend’s name with that of this notorious figure and only then realized, embarrassed, that this infamous man was his father.

It was then that my friend shared with me his father’s story — his whole story, which included more than just the horrifying headlines the man had earned during the Civil Rights era. I hadn’t realized that the old preacher had later repented of his segregationist views, abruptly resigning from the pulpit of his large church, becoming a teacher and, eventually, spending his last years as the humble pastor of a tiny, multiracial congregation in a small storefront church.

My friend traces that transformation back to a day when he, as a child, was sitting at the kitchen table doing schoolwork. He’d been assigned a book report by his grade-school teacher, an old Quaker who was all too aware of his father’s views. And so when his father came into the kitchen, he saw that book — a children’s adaptation of Douglass’ Narrative — sitting on the table. And there, on the cover, was the same famous portrait of Douglass I’ve included here.

“What is this?” my friend’s father had said, seizing the book before he could respond. “It’s him! How did you …?”

And then, after frantically examining the book for a moment, he just stood there, trembling and staring at the picture on the cover. My friend said it frightened him to realize, for the first time, that his father could be frightened too.

“He’s … he was a real person?” his father was muttering. “He was real. It was … it really …” He fled the house, taking the book with him, and didn’t return for hours. After that, my friend says, his father was a changed man.

My friend’s version of this story, I should note, is much more dramatic — and far more detailed — than his father’s own account. I tracked down a water-damaged copy of his long out-of-print memoir, From Galling Chains Set Free, in which he describes that day, suggesting he was simply angry that his son’s teachers were assigning such reading material. He rushed off to read the book seeking, as he put it, “ammunition for the next school board meeting,” but then, unexpectedly, found it moving and persuasive. He mentions it was the first time he’d ever seen a picture of Douglass, but he never describes that moment of horror-struck recognition after seeing the book’s cover and never explains what it might have meant.

So which account was more accurate? Did it really happen the way my friend remembered it? I’ll just say this: That chapter of his father’s memoir is titled, “An Unexpected Visitor From the Past.”

What I’ve pieced together from all these stories sounds unbelievable, and I certainly cannot prove any of it. But there are more things in heaven and earth than I can prove.

All I can tell you is what I believe. And what I believe is this: Somewhere in America, just before midnight on every Friday the 13th, the ghost of Frederick Douglass appears at the bedside of some racist wretch.

On some occasions, it seems, he stands silently, glowering with blazing eyes. That’s how then-Sen. Lyndon Johnson described him. (Although, once again, the description comes to us only very indirectly, through a confidant of Betty Ford’s. Ford said Lady Bird Johnson told her of an “awful dream” that left her husband shaken and unsettled throughout the final months of 1959. She used those exact words, “blazing eyes,” which we can only assume was a phrase her husband himself had used.)

Sometimes, apparently, Douglass speaks, condemning the one he is visiting with all the famed eloquence and devastating wit of America’s greatest orator and prophet. (In divorce papers, Cornelia Wallace described her husband George as having, the previous spring, spent “three days with his nose in the dictionary,” looking up words “he’d heard in a dream.”)

And sometimes, on rare occasions, it seems that Douglass’ spirit possesses the same great physical strength that the man himself had in life. At least a couple of stories suggest that these visitations have sometimes involved a serious, corporeal ass-kicking. In 1913, Ty Cobb missed several games in late June due to vague injuries he never explained to manager Hughie Jennings. Fifty years later, on Sunday, Sept. 15, Byron de la Beckwith showed up in church with badly bruised ribs and a greenish-yellow shiner nearly closing his left eye. No one quite believed his story about falling down the cellar stairs, and from that day until his death in 2001, it was rumored that the warped old man never slept a wink on the night of any Friday the 13th.

All of this raises many questions for which I have no answer. Why Friday the 13th? Why were these particular people visited rather than others? Why were some of them transformed while others seemed, if anything, even more set in their ways following the visitation?

And who’s next?

All I know is this: Later this month, on Monday the 16th, somewhere in America a man will arrive at work looking clammy and pale. He may be a politician, a preacher, a TV host or radio personality. He may be a famous leader, a celebrity, or someone whose name most of us would never recognize.

“Are you alright?” his friends and colleagues will ask, “You don’t look well.”

And he’ll insist, a bit defensively, that yes, yes, he’s fine, just fine. Just a little tired. Rough weekend. Trouble sleeping.
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5 Real Life Friday the 13th Horror Stories!
http://www.sparknotes.com/mindhut/2012/07/13/5-real-life-friday-the-13th-horror-stories

It’s that time of year again, everybody! The day when we start our morning with a monstrous bowl of Lucky Charms and wear as many horseshoes and rabbits’ feet as feasibly possibly: Friday the 13th. While the rest of us do our best to stave off the bad karma, there are some that actually have the audacity to scoff at the aura of misfortune that dooms us all. But maybe after they read this list of 5 real life Friday the 13th horror stories, they just might ask to borrow that spare horseshoe of yours (if you're willing to share, of course).

1) The Fall of the Aztec Empire (August 13, 1521)

Conquistador Hernán Cortés and his Spanish military contingent led an expedition into South America to conquer and colonize the inland territory of the Aztec Empire in the name of the Spanish Crown. The Spanish war machine, in an alliance with the native Tlaxcalans, decimated one Aztec city after another before finally marching on the capital city of Tenochtitlan. Overpowered, the city’s forces fell to Spanish occupation on August 13th, signifying the end of the Aztec Empire and the beginning of Mexico City.

2) Cannibal Alfred Packer Faces Justice (April 13, 1883)

Five prospectors including Alfred Packer traveled toward Gunnison, Colorado on February 9th, 1874 in hopes of laying their claim to the gold in the area. A month prior to their journey, the chief of the Ute tribe, Chief Ouray, warned them to postpone their travels until spring to avoid the harsh winter. Choosing not to heed his advice, the five found themselves without ample supplies and exposed to the relentless cold. Their only survival option? Cannibalism. Packer was the sole survivor of the ordeal and was convicted of four counts of murder on April 13, 1883. In his defense, Packer claimed that one of his fellow miners had committed the actual murder of the others and started eating before turning on him. Packer was forced to kill his colleague and merely ate the bodies out of necessity.

3) Collapse of the Royal Plaza Hotel (August 13, 1993)

The Royal Plaza Hotel was once the pride of the city of Nakhon Ratchasima in Thailand, but that all changed when negligence on the engineer’s part led to the disastrous collapse of the structure. Unable to sustain the weight of three additional—and poorly constructed—stories added years prior, the ground level support gave in. Within seconds the building collapsed and led to the death of 137 people and the injury of 227 others. Thai law enforcement uncovered years of underhanded bribes by the engineer so inspectors would turn a blind eye to the gross construction violations.

4) The Arrest of the Knights Templar (October 13, 1307)

During the Crusades, the Knights Templar were highly revered by all of Christendom as they came to symbolize Christianity’s proper claim over the Holy Land. The Knights’ status allowed them to enjoy several benefits, including exemption from taxes and immense wealth. But as it became clearly evident that the Holy Land was slipping from the Christians' grasp, the public’s support of the Knights Templar began to wane. King Philip IV of France, already in considerable financial debt to the Knights Templar, took advantage of the public’s disdain and distrust over the order’s secrecy to demand that they be arrested for a litany of defamatory crimes including the purported desecration of religious idols and perverse acts in their initiation ceremonies. On October 13th, a number of Knights Templars were arrested and subjected to brutal torture and execution. The order had finally dissolved during the early 14th century.

5) Teen Struck By Lightening on Friday the 13th (August 13, 2010)

During the Lowestoft Seafront Air Festival in England, one teen spectator was literally given the shock of his life when he was struck by a stray bolt of lightening. Miraculously, he survived and was immediately treated for a minor burn on his shoulder. But what truly makes this a strange story is the fact that the boy was 13 years old, struck at 13:13 military time (1:13 p.m.) and it all took place on Friday the 13th! Now that’s lucky!

Any real life Friday the 13th horror stories you know of?
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All,

In the event it hasn't been noted before, this is our 3rd Friday the 13th for this year.

Enjoy it to the fullest.

I had a weird feeling at work today (like those kids in the Final Destination movies) and came home. Our internet connection at work wasn't working right, shared sites were down, and I had an overwhelming feeling of dread. I said screw this and went home. Still have that feeling though.

When I was little, my favorite older cousin Victor, died in a car accident when he was 21. I was probably about 7 or 8 and his sister was a year older than me.

My Dad was driving me, my sisters, my mother, my Tia & her daughter to Texas and we stopped at a hotel for the night on a friday the 13th. All of the kids were always put in one room and my parents & Tia had a separate room (zomg call CPS!).

Anyway, I remember my cousin & I were sleeping in the same bed and I saw her get up and go to the bathroom. I thought she had turned on the light because light filled the room and it woke me up. I looked over and my older cousin, the one who had died, was sitting in a chair right next to the bathroom. He was smiling at me and motioned for me to come and sit on his knee. I went to see him and I asked why he was there but he wouldn't talk to me. I could smell his cologne.

In the meantime, my cousin came out of the bathroom and saw me standing there and she saw what I saw because she went apeshitt and started screaming her head off, "It's Victor! It's Victor!" When the grown ups came in to the room, my Tia also started crying because she said she could smell Victor's cologne too.

We packed our stuff and left that hotel in the middle of the night.

oh just today a bunch of weird things happened at my school

first of all when we went to pull down the shades the person pulling them down accidentally let go and the shades went up. then a couple minutes later every one of the shades on other windows suddenly shot up at the same time!

then in a different class one of my teachers was writing on the board, then he went to the middle of the room to look at a students work and when he pointed back to the board all the writing was gone.

then, the lights suddenly turned on in our classroom without anyone touching em and then when someone wanted to turn them off he saw that the switch was already down and he wanted to turn it back on and the moment he touched it (just touched the switch) the lights turned back on.

weird huh

BWWHAHAHHAHAHAHAH Wrote:
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>
> Any real life Friday the 13th horror stories you
> know of?

This is really a Friday the 13th story, but freaky none the less. My friend Tim and I went to San Antonio to visit our friend John. John has 2 roommates, Jeremy and Tony, and we all went to high school together. Well, the night we arrived we all went to dinner, then John, his friend Cindy, me and Tim went to the bookstore. Afterwards, we decided to play Scrabble. So we were playing Scrabble and I was the score keeper. The order of turns was Tim would go, then me, then John, and Cindy last.

We were still playing when Jeremy came home with his girlfriend, Angela. Jeremy said that he would make drinks for us. So we were still playing Scrabble and Jeremy handed us all shots to take. First we wanted to do a toast. John held up his shot and said, "Here's to Satan!" We all looked at him like he was nuts and just laughed. So we got back to playing Scrabble, and it was Tim's turn. He went and scored 6 pts. I wrote that down. It was my turn, I scored a 6 and wrote it down. John went, scored a 6, wrote it down. While Cindy was trying to figure out a word to do, I was looking at the score then I realized....Tim, me, and John scored 6 pts in a row....666. That scared the crap out of me. Luckily Cindy got 4 pts, but still what are the odds. And this happened right after John did his toast. FREAKY

Here's my depressing story (I literally cried for hours):
-When I got home from school, I came to my fish tank. I fed my betta fish (his name is casey) and I went downstairs to watch a couple of friday the 13th and other scary movies with my friends.
-After they left, I checked on Casey. He was on the gravel floor. At first I thought he was sleeping, he always does that, but when I flicked the light on, he didn't swim into his cave. As I came closer, I saw a white sheet covering him. I tapped lightly on the glass. He didn't respond. I moved the bowl lightly to see if he would swim. None of his fins moved. He only moved if I moved the bowl. My best friend... ...

R.I.P. Casey ='C

wont lie, i only read the beta story. and that alone made me not want to read any others

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Full of tl;dr

Does Friday the 13th freak you out? If so, hold on to your rabbit's foot extra tight, because there are three of these supposedly unlucky dates in 2012, though perhaps luckily, this Friday (July 13) is the last of them. Though, there's always some fear to be had next year, 2013.

Read on for 13 strange facts about this day of superstition.

1. This year is a special one for Friday the 13ths: There are three of them: Jan. 13, April 13 and July 13. The freaky thing? The dates fall exactly 13 weeks apart. That hasn't happened since 1984.

2. If that scares you, you may have paraskavedekatriaphobia (also known as friggatriskaidekaphobia). Those are the scientific terms for fear of Friday the 13th. Triskaidekaphobia is fear of the number 13.

3. It's not clear when or why Friday the 13th became associated with bad luck. The association may be biblical, given that the 13th guest at the Last Supper betrayed Jesus. His crucifixion was the next day, apparently a Friday. Or maybe 13 suffers from coming after the more-pleasing number 12, which gets to number the months, the days of Christmas and even the eggs in a dozen. (There are also 12 signs of the zodiac, 12 gods of Olympus, 12 labors of Hercules, 12 tribes of Israel and 12 apostles of Jesus.)

4. Whatever the reason, fear of 13 has spread far and wide: Hotels and hospitals often skip the 13th floor, and even airports quietly omit gate 13 sometimes.

5. The next year in which we'll have three Friday the 13ths is 2015. They'll fall in February, March and November.

6. If you think your Friday the 13th is likely to be bad, be glad you aren't a 14th-century Knight Templar. On Oct. 13, 1307, officers of King Philip IV of France raided the homes of thousands of these Crusades warriors, imprisoning them on charges of illegal activities. Though the charges weren't proven, more than a hundred died of terrible torture, according to "Tales of the Knights Templar" (Warner Books, 1995).

7. Fittingly, director of psychological thrillers Alfred Hitchcock was born on the 13th — Friday, Aug. 13, 1999, would have been his 100th birthday. Perhaps aptly titled "Number 13," a film that was supposed to be Hitchcock's directorial debut never made it past the first few scenes and was shut down due to financial problems. He allegedly said the film wasn't very interesting. (Meanwhile, Fidel Castro was born on Friday the 13th, in August 1926.)

8. Why does the Friday the 13th superstition stick so firmly in our minds? According to Thomas Gilovich, who chairs the department of psychology at Cornell University, our brains are almost too good at making associations.

"If anything bad happens to you on Friday the 13th, the two will be forever associated in your mind, and all those uneventful days in which the 13th fell on a Friday will be ignored," Gilovich said in a statement. [13 Superstitions & Traditions Explained]

9. For pagans, 13 is actually a lucky number. It corresponds with the number of full moons in a year.

10. President Franklin D. Roosevelt is said to have avoided travel on the 13th day of any month, and would never host 13 guests at a meal. Napoleon and President Herbert Hoover were also triskaidekaphobic, with an abnormal fear of the number 13.

11. Mark Twain once was the 13th guest at a dinner party. A friend warned him not to go. "It was bad luck," Twain later told the friend. "They only had food for 12." Superstitious diners in Paris can hire a quatorzieme, or professional 14th guest. [13 Odd Occurrences on Friday the 13th]

12. Stock broker and author Thomas W. Lawson, in his 1907 novel "Friday the Thirteenth," wrote of a stockbroker's attempts to take down Wall Street on the unluckiest day of the month. Reportedly, stock brokers after this were as unlikely to buy or sell stocks on this unlucky day as they were to walk under a ladder, according to accounts of a 1925 New York Times article.

13. This fear of Friday the 13th can be serious business, according to the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in Asheville, N.C., which, among other things, offers therapy to help people overcome their fear of the freaky friday. Their estimates suggest hundreds of millions of dollars, up to $900 million are lost due to people's fear of flying or doing the business as usual that day, though that number isn't backed up with other estimates.

Wind Chimes And The Mark Of The Devil

I used to spend a lot of time sleeping on couches. I'm actually kind of proud of that fact. I wandered around for a year or so, living out of my car, and seeing all the highlights of Texas one friend's couch at a time. I was free as a bird and loved every moment of it.

The time finally came when I found the inclination to have direction and structure in my life. I called a friend in the city I wanted to settle down in for a while and requested the use of his couch until I could find a job and get on my feet. Lucky for me, he was obliging, so I high-tailed my care-free self to a comfy black leather couch in a suburb north of Houston.

As I was drifting to sleep that first night, I realized my peaceful dreams had some noisy competition. Wind chimes. My parents had a small set of them on our porch when I was a little girl, so ordinarily this would have been a soothing sound. This particular clatter, however, eerily drifted from below my friend's upstairs apartment, and sounded like the soundtrack to a cinematic kidnapping scene.

I discovered, upon the return of daylight, that the elderly lady below us was an avid collector of wind chimes and birdhouses, all proudly displayed in cramped, disorderly fashion on her back porch. These were not just cute "tinkling" wind chimes. No, some of them sounded like trash cans on strings. Others had larger pipes that rang with gong-like brassiness, and still others were wooden or bamboo that "ticked" and "tocked" unrythmically as they struck each other. Nestled into this cacophony was a miniature ghost town of birdhouses. Once cute country cottages, barns, and tiny apartment buildings, they were all beginning to succumb to fading paint, collapsing roofs, and mildew from Houston's humidity.

I eventually got used to the accompaniment, and even the unsettling sight of the birds' neglected homes, but I never got used to the lady who stood outside with her collection and stared off into space. At first she would look like a statue. I would think I could sneak by her and she might not notice me before I could run up the stairs to the safety of my temporary black leather couch. It never failed, though, that as soon as I had just barely squeezed past her, she would call out to me in a feeble voice the most bizarre things.

"The ducks don't like me anymore!" she said one day. The next it was, "Have you seen my friend? He was supposed to be here tomorrow, and I've been waiting!" That was just the beginning. She eventually came out her front door and introduced herself to me, loudly announcing her first name and "I am bi-polar, I just thought you should know." This became a daily ritual for me: walk past the creepy back porch, ignore her random outbursts, then again be loudly reminded of her name and that I should know she was bi-polar.

Three months later, I had become a pro at dodging her. The area was blessed with lush foliage I could duck behind and around on my mission to avoid her. When her usual bi-polar announcement started leading into the command that I should trust Jesus, I started tossing rocks and sticks away from me to divert her attention. My couch-lending friend made fun of me for having a "new friend" and made sarcastic gestures such as leaving a camo shirt and face paint on my couch to aid with my "covert ops" he said.

My final run in with the wind chime lady occurred about a month before I moved away from the black leather couch. I stepped out the front door to smoke a cigarette, and there she was. Standing at the bottom of our stairs, she had a nasty bruise on her face, was more disoriented than usual and was pacing back and forth calling out "Help me! I need an ambulance!"

"Are you okay? Did you fall down?" I asked.

"Help me! I need an ambulance!" was all she would say. So I called 911 and helped her get into her apartment to sit down. Now, if I thought the musical back porch was creepy, going inside and letting the 911 dispatcher talk me through searching the apartment for any medications the paramedics needed to know about was a trip through a haunted house. Jesus was everywhere. Big pictures. Little pictures. framed ones, posters, tapestries, coffee mugs, throw pillows... Jesus' eyes peered at me from every nook and cranny. Jesus with children. Jesus healing people. Jesus dying. And dying again. And... again. And Jesus weeping. Probably because he died. There were hymns playing on a small stereo in the corner, and because Mother Nature has a sense of humor, it was windy so the symphony of wind chimes kept picking up volume.

I helped her sit down at the dining table, while she repeatedly reminded me to tell the doctors she was bi-polar. All of a sudden she declared at her usual volume that she needed to balance her checkbook. She pulled out all of her checks one by one, until they covered the table. Demanding I help her balance her checkbook, she proceeded to grab a green marker and scribble "666" all over all the checks.

"Are you f***ing kidding me?!" I yelled.

"I HAVE TO BALANCE MY CHECKBOOK!" she screamed back at me, while the 911 operator patiently explained to me that I needed to remain calm in order for bi-polar Jesus wind chime lady to stay calm.

The paramedics arrived, and I realized the entire ordeal had taken place in under eight minutes.

"Props for quick response, guys," I told them. "I couldn't find any meds, but she's bi-polar, and I don't know how she got that bruise."

"I'M BI-POLAR AND I NEED AN AMBULANCE," she angrily chimed in. "I HAVE TO BALANCE MY CHECKBOOK."

They stared in disbelief at the table of checks all bearing large foreboding "666" brands in green marker. A big smile spread across my face. Loud eerie wind chimes? A Jesus memorabilia infestation and echoing hymns? The "mark of the Devil"? I freaking love my life! And people question why I wanted to be a writer? The world is full of crazy things and people just waiting to be documented.

"Well... you guys know how to do your jobs... unless you have anymore questions for me, I'll be in the apartment directly above here. Have fun!"

They took her to the hospital, and I never saw her after that. Her son came and packed up her apartment and told me he was moving her to an assisted living facility. I helped him take down all the wind chimes and birdhouses, while he talked about her rapidly declining mental health. Half an hour later we shook hands and I wished him the best of luck with his mother.

I was walking home from the bus stop a week later when I tripped over something in the leaves near her back porch. My shoe uncovered a small birdhouse with a green roof. I guess the crazy wind on that haunting day had knocked it into the bushes. I smiled and carried it inside to secretly stash in my suitcase.

It's been three years since I had a dramatic falling out with the owner of the black leather couch. Sadly, He turned out to not be such a great friend. But I'll always remember the nightly serenade as I wandered into dreamland, and I still have that birdhouse on a shelf in my bathroom. Perhaps I'll start collecting wind chimes.